


I'm Telling You

by aceonthebass



Category: The Beatles
Genre: M/M, Mendips, Songwriting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-27
Updated: 2008-08-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 00:23:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9940565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceonthebass/pseuds/aceonthebass
Summary: Paul is trying to tell John something. (Or is it the other way round?)





	

**Mendips, summer of 1963**  
  
Paul leaned back against the wall and continued to slowly pick out the song on his guitar. He was so absorbed that he failed to hear the clatter of footsteps in the hall, so when John burst through the door and into the windowed front porch, Paul greeted him with a look of surprise.  
  
“Don’t give me that, then,” John said indignantly. “My bloody house, innit?”  
  
“Hardly,” murmured Paul, still half lost in the song.  
  
“Eh!” John protested, but without any real heat. “Anyway, you knew I’d be in eventually.” This was apparently all Paul was going to get in the way of an apology for John’s lateness, but he hardly seemed to notice.  
  
“Yeah. I knew,” replied Paul absently. He softly picked out another chord, and then a third. John placed his own guitar carefully on the tiled floor and then lay down next to where his friend was sitting. He observed Paul quietly for a moment, watching the way he bit his lip and frowned with concentration as the notes fell into place. By the fifth chord, however, John was bored, and annoyed with Paul for ignoring him.  
  
“What’s that you’ve got there?” he asked, louder than necessary, in order to break through Paul's reverie. Paul blinked and looked at him properly. Then, seeming to absorb the question, he leaned over and picked up the LP next to him, tossing it to John.  
  
“Bett sent it to me,” he said. “It’s a musical from America. Movie came out a few years ago. Rodgers and Hammerstein.”  
  
“Huh,” said John, trying not to be impressed. “Bit of a swish cover.”   
  
“Yeah, but the songs, you know. Really great.”  
  
“All right, all right.” John flipped it over to look at the titles. “Which one were you doing?” To his surprise, Paul looked away, seeming faintly embarrassed.   
  
“Nah, you won’t like it.”  
  
“And who the bloody 'ell are you to say what I like, eh?” John’s Scouse accent, carefully frozen out of him by Mimi, always made a sudden resurgence when he felt pugnacious.  
  
“It’s a bit, I dunno, soft. Kind of like 'Till There Was You,' really. Better though.”  
  
“Well, go on then. Play it for us and I’ll _tell_ you what I think of it.”  
  
“I haven’t hardly got it down yet, even,” Paul protested. John shot him a withering look.  
  
“What? Owned the thing for a whole day and you haven’t got all the lyrics and chord changes down yet? Slipping in your old age, Macca.”  
  
“Aw, lay off,” said Paul, but he looked pleased all the same.  
  
“Go on, then,” repeated John.  
  
“Well, they sing it all operatic, you know, but anyway.” Paul played the opening chords hesitantly, with his head bent close to the guitar, and then very earnestly began to sing. Some of the notes were almost out of his range, and his voice shook.  
  
 _“If I loved you  
Time and time again I would try to say   
All I’d want you to know.   
If I loved you,   
Words wouldn’t come in an easy way  
Round in circles I’d go.   
Longing to tell you, but afraid and shy.   
I’d let my golden chances pass me by.  
Soon you’d leave me, off you would go in the mist of day   
Never, never to know . . .”_  
  
As the melody climbed toward its highest note, Paul stopped abruptly.   
  
“That’s all I’ve figured out so far.” Almost unwillingly, he glanced down at his partner. John looked up at him through half-lidded eyes; he had left his glasses upstairs in his room again.  
  
“Well, Paul, you weren’t taking the piss, were you? Soft doesn’t begin to cover it. And you know, the last thing we need is another ‘Till There Was You.’”  
  
Paul’s face went blank. He slid his guitar strap over his head and let the instrument lightly hit the tiles with a discordant jangle of strings.  
  
“Still . . .” said John, not seeming to notice the lack of expression on his partner’s face. “There’s something there, isn’t there? Not ‘I love you,’ but ‘if.’ ‘If I loved you.’"   
  
Paul seemed to unfreeze, with just a slight raise of his eyebrows that hinted at relief.  
  
“We couldn’t rip it off direct-like, though. Bound to have a few people listening to it, Rodgers and Hammerstein. Not that they’ll recognize it once we’re through with it, will they?” He grinned, and Paul returned it with a tentative half smile of his own.  
  
“Let’s see now,” said John, tipping his head back and staring through the glass to the overcast sky. “‘If I loved you.’ If I . . . love you. _What if_ I love you? What if I’m in love with you? What then, eh?”  
  
“Can’t imagine such a thing,” replied Paul cheekily.  
  
“Imagine . . .” John mused. “Imagine I’m in love with you.” He sat bolt upright and reached for his guitar. “All right, let’s have it again, then. There's _something_ there, all right.”  
  
Paul grinned and slung his guitar back around his neck.  
      
  


**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to livejournal as scarlett_bat


End file.
